


Let's Turn It Blue

by syriala



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Cuddling & Snuggling, Eavesdropping, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misunderstandings, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-24 09:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10738641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/syriala/pseuds/syriala
Summary: Integrity.That was the word tattooed over Tony’s heart and ever since he had known what it meant he was looking forward to meeting his soulmate.Now Tony was a superhero and there were a lot more people who that word would fit, but really, Tony only wanted one of them.And that was never gonna happen, because Tony had seen Sam’s word and it didn’t describe him.





	Let's Turn It Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InsaneJuliann](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneJuliann/gifts).



> This was written as a birthday present for Jules.

Integrity.

That was the word tattooed over Tony’s heart and ever since he had known what it meant he was looking forward to meeting his soulmate.

He had thought that maybe Rhodey would be it, back in MIT, and since Rhodey had ‘Spoiled’ on his thigh, it would have fit and all, but nothing came of it. They kissed to really make it clear that they weren’t it for each other and that had been that.

Now Tony was a superhero and there were a lot more people who that word would fit. Every superhero had to have some kind of integrity, doing what they did, and there were at least two people on the active team who had integrity as their defining streak, but really, Tony only wanted one of them.

And that was never gonna happen, because Tony had seen Sam’s word and it didn’t describe him.

 _Valiant_. It was such an old-fashioned sentiment, and Tony was pretty sure there was only one person in the tower who fit that word and it sure as hell wasn’t Tony.

Sam and Steve were pretty close after all, and it had been some time since Tony had seen Sam’s word. There was no way to tell if it had turned blue because of a soulmate’s kiss. If it had turned blue because of Steve’s kiss.

Tony tried to shove those thoughts away, it wasn’t like it would get him anywhere, but it was hard with Sam always right there with him.

They had somehow become friends after Steve moved back in, dragging Sam along, after the whole mess with SHIELD and the helicarriers and now Tony felt like Sam was always around.

It wasn’t bad, Sam was easy to be around and Tony like his company, but it strained Tony to always be reminded that Sam’s word wasn’t for him.

And after some time it was showing.

“Tones,” Rhodey said one evening when they were seated on the couch. “You have to tell him. Try it. What’s a kiss between friends, right?”

Tony groaned and then hid his face in his hands. “You can’t be serious. I told you. His word says ‘valiant’. There is no way that is for me.”

Rhodey shot him a very unimpressed glance, and then tucked him close. “But your word is for him. Don’t pretend that you are not in love with him anyway. And it fits him. It fits him perfectly. You have to try.”

“And then what? I’m not his soulmate and that’s it then. My love is gonna be the most pointless thing ever and all I ever get is his friendship. If I am lucky,” Tony almost yelled and wriggled out of Rhodey’s arm to get up and pace.

“Tony,” Rhodey tried but Tony cut him off with a gesture.

“There is no way someone like Sam is going to be my soulmate and you know it,” Tony hissed and now Rhodey got up as well.

“Don’t be like that,” he pleaded. “Don’t do this to yourself. You are worth everything, Tony, and everyone would be lucky to be your soulmate. And don’t think for a second that Sam thinks of you as worthless, too.”

“You don’t know what he feels,” Tony said. “Don’t make me believe that this could be true, Rhodey, it’s not…don’t give me hope like that,” he finished quietly.

“But you deserve some hope. I see how he looks at you, Tony, there is definitely something there. And even if you are not soulmates, you can still be together. I know you know there are people out there who decide to never search for their soulmate because they are happy with what they have.”

“’Valiant’, Rhodey. It’s even worse than heroic. And Sam is not going to settle with me if he can have Steve, he is not that much of an idiot.”

“You are impossible, you know that?” Rhodey told him but gently tugged him towards the couch again.

“And you are a meddler,” Tony gave back, as he willingly went back onto the couch. “Let’s not talk about it again, okay?” he whispered when he snuggled close to Rhodey again.

“Tonight,” Rhodey said in agreement and Tony sighed. But it was better than nothing.

~*~*~

Sam hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but it wasn’t like Rhodey and Tony were hiding or whispering.

Sam walked by right as Rhodey called out “Tony,” and it was enough to make Sam stop in his tracks. Tony had been distant lately and if Rhodey had also noticed something maybe it was something bad that was eating at Tony.

So he stepped closer to the doorway, keeping in the shadows and behind the couch only to see Tony pace in front of it.

He cut Rhodey’s attempt at talking off with an angry gesture and then hissed “There is no way someone like Sam is going to be my soulmate and you know it”.

It was like a sucker punch to Sam’s gut and when Rhodey said “Don’t be like that,” Sam turned around and walked away.

He had always known, well suspected, that his word was for Tony and he had been pretty sure that, even if Tony didn’t have a word for him, there were some feelings on Tony’s side involved.

Obviously he had been wrong about that.

Sam made his way over to his room, and with every step he took he got angrier. By the time he reached his living quarters he was seething with anger.

If this was how Tony was thinking, if he really believed that someone like Sam wasn’t good enough for him, then Sam didn’t even want his word to belong to Tony.

Valiant, it meant being good and great, putting the needs of the many over themselves, and Sam had thought that Tony fit all that and then some. And Sam had been ready. He had been ready to tell Tony about his word, and what he thought; that he really wanted Tony to be his soulmate.

But if Tony put people in two different categories, ones worthy of him and ones who are not, then Sam would rather cut his word out than have it belong to Tony.

~*~*~

Something was wrong with Sam.

Not like obviously wrong, because he was still hanging out with Bucky and Steve and Rhodey as usual but he was definitely avoiding Tony. And when he wasn’t too busy avoiding him, he was all snappy and angry and Tony didn’t know what he did.

The only thing he could think of was that Sam somehow had found out that Tony was seriously considering that his word was for Sam. And going by this reaction Tony was pretty sure everything about him was unwanted, the attention being the least of it.

After two weeks Rhodey was so damn done with Tony and his behaviour, that he threatened to lock Tony and Sam into a room if they didn’t get their act together.

Tony wasn’t a big fan of that, but he also didn’t like the thought of actually asking Sam what was going on.

In the end he still decided for the latter, but only because he ran into Sam on his way to the work shop.

“Sam, can I have a word,” Tony called out, a second before Sam turned around on his heels.

“Sure,” was the more than cold answer and hearing Sam talk like this to him really hurt.

“So, you mind telling me what’s bothering you?” Tony asked once he was sure he got Sam’s attention.

“What do you mean? Nothing is bothering me,” Sam gave back.

“Well, given that you are barely talking to me and when you are you are all cold and curt, I would say something is definitely bothering you. And I would like to know,” Tony managed to say without sounding too hurt.

“I didn’t think you had the time to talk to any of us, let alone gracing us with your attention all the time,” Sam shot back, already angling himself away from Tony as if this conversation was over for him.

“What are you talking about?” Tony asked him, reaching out for Sam to stop him from leaving, but Sam pushed his hand away.

“I don’t know why you even bother. It’s very clear what you think of us anyway.”

Tony was so taken aback by that hissed comment that he didn’t even react when Sam left.

He made his way down into the workshop in a hazy, and when he saw Rhodey there he just threw his hands up and said “He hates me.”

“He does not,” Rhodey immediately gave back without even looking away from the work bench.

“He does. Friday, tell him.”

“Sam does seem to have an animosity towards you,” Friday readily agreed and Tony would be all smug about being right, if it didn’t hurt so much.

“What the hell?” Rhodey asked. “He was all over you. You could practically see the hearts in his eyes. What happened?”

“I tried to ask him that, but nothing. He just seems to really not like me any longer.” Tony thought that the word hate would fit here too, but he refused to use it. It was bad enough already.

“Wow,” Rhodey muttered. “I am so sorry.”

“Yeah, me too,” Tony sighed. “But hey, I was right. I told you my word wasn’t for him.”

“And this is the only time where you never wanted to be right,” Rhodey said and pulled Tony into a hug.

Tony couldn’t answer that, but he shrugged, as much as he could with Rhodey holding him close.

~*~*~

The team was angry, Tony could tell as much, but he was too tired and hurt to really care.

He just wanted to get out of the suit without losing any more blood and then he wanted to sleep for a few days before he had to work out the new dents in his armour.

“What were you thinking?” Steve asked him again when they entered the elevator. “You could have died. You got seriously injured as it is, don’t lie, Friday already filled me in, so what the hell were you thinking, Tony?”

“Mostly I was thinking that I wanted that fight to end.”

“And you think not letting the villain of the week die under the rubble they themselves caused was going to get you to the end of the fight faster?” Bucky asked with a raised eyebrow and Tony sighed.

“Look, it’s not like we can decide to let him, or any other villain die, okay? We cannot make that difference between people. Yeah, maybe he was evil, and maybe he was killing people, but if we make that decision then we are not better. We cannot differentiate like that.”

Tony had barely spoken the words when Sam was already yelling at him.

“How dare you say that?! How dare you, out of all people say that?” Sam shouted in his face before he turned around and stormed away.

Everyone was staring after him before Tony asked “Okay, anyone want to explain to me what just happened?”

“I would if I had a clue,” Steve gave back but after another second of watching Sam leave he turned to Tony.

“You will go to medical now and let yourself be treated.”

“But,” Tony said and weakly gestured down the hall where Sam had vanished.

“You can hash that out once you are not bleeding out anymore.”

Tony stuck out his tongue at him, secure in the knowledge that Steve would never be the wiser, and then carefully shuffled off to medical.

Once he was treated he was tempted to go to bed right this second but then he remembered Sam and his outburst earlier and suddenly he knew that he wouldn’t be able to sleep if he didn’t know what that had all been about.

“Friday, where is Sam?” Tony asked and was promptly directed to Sam’s living quarters.

He didn’t bother knocking, convinced that Sam wouldn’t let him in anyway, and walked right into his living room.

Sam was lying on the couch, obviously not doing anything, but he got up the instant he saw Tony.

“What do you want?” he asked, and there was so much disdain in his voice that Tony just wanted to turn around and go to bed like the original plan suggested.

“I think we should talk about that little scene earlier,” Tony said, and crossed his arms in front of his chest. He wasn’t sure if he could keep it together with Sam acting like this, but at least this gave him the illusion of staying in control. At least of himself.

“What’s there to talk about?” Sam scoffed.

“Well, maybe how you seem to have this very clear picture of me and I don’t know where you get it from. Care to enlighten me?”

“Not really,” Sam grumbled and flopped down on the couch again. “It’s not like you care about us lower class citizens anyway.”

“What crawled up your ass and died there?” Tony almost yelled.

“Don’t pretend like you are interested in my opinion,” Sam yelled right back and got up from the couch again.

“What is going on with you?  We got along just fine before, so what the hell happened?” Tony asked. “I thought…” he quietly added but then trailed off. He didn’t come here for that.

“You thought what, huh? That I would cater to your every whim, just do whatever you wanted?”

The way Sam said that, mocking and condescending, made something inside Tony squeeze tight.

“Why are you talking like that? What did I ever do to make you have such a bad opinion about me?” he whispered and Sam outright laughed in his face.

Tony felt like crying right then and there, but he couldn’t, so he just grabbed his arms harder.

“So that’s it? You formed your opinion about me and I don’t even get a chance to maybe explain? Why do you treat me like I’m something less all of a sudden?”

“Like you are something less?” Sam said and shook his head in disbelieve. “Try it the other way around. I heard you and Rhodey. Don’t pretend. It’s you who thinks less of me.”

“Rhodey and…? What does that have to do with anything? I think the world of you, you know that!”

“Do I? ‘There is no way someone like Sam is going to be my soulmate and you know it’ tells a pretty different story if you ask me.”

“You heard that? You _eavesdropped_?”

“I did not eavesdrop. I passed by and you weren’t exactly keeping quiet.”

“Yeah, let me tell you, you eavesdropped on the wrong part of that conversation.”

“Oh yeah? Enlighten me then. What could probably make that better.”

“Rhodey and I were discussing the possibility that you are my soulmate,” Tony shouted and just barely kept his voice from cracking.

“Then it seems like I heard the exact right part, because I get it. No way that could ever happen. I get that I’m not good enough, okay, that’s not a surprise, but I never thought you would be so focused on the, the ‘class difference’.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Tony asked him, now a lot calmer because he might just know where this was going. He wasn’t looking forward to dragging all his baggage out in front of Sam but he could do it if it meant clearing up this misunderstanding.

“You gonna tell me that this isn’t what I heard?” Sam asked and he was still all sneer and viciousness, and even seeing him like this hurt Tony.

“I wasn’t talking about you not being good enough for me. You got it the wrong way around. _I_ am not good enough for _you_.”

That brought Sam up short. He clearly seemed taken aback, going by the sudden silence and wide eyes.

“Besides. I know what your word says,” Tony said and refused to feel bad about that. It had been an accident. It wasn’t like Sam had been hiding it. “ _Valiant_ definitely doesn’t mean me, so I don’t even know why it bothers you so much. You already have Steve right there.”

“Steve! What the fuck? Steve is not my soulmate, why would you even think that? Whoever has his word is gonna be running around with stubborn or reckless, but certainly not valiant.”

“Yeah, well, but it’s clearly not me either, so why the hell do you care so much?” Tony yelled at Sam, because this was the whole point, right?

Why did Sam care so much about anything Tony said?

He waited for a few seconds but when he didn’t get an answer, he shrugged.

“Yeah, I thought so,” he mumbled, desperately trying to breathe through the constricting feeling in his chest.

It wasn’t like he had expected anything else, but having it thrown into him face like this certainly wasn’t an experience Tony ever wanted to live through.

He started to turn around when Sam was suddenly right there in front of him.

“This is why I care,” he said right before he kissed him.

Tony was too perplexed the precious first seconds but then he got with the program. He pulled Sam even closer while he reciprocated with everything he had. If they didn’t turn out to be soulmates, he would at least always have this.

The desperation accompanying the kiss soon tampered off and they slowly exchanged kisses instead of letting them be dictated by their sudden urge to be close.

“So this just happened,” Sam mumbled against Tony’s lips, pecking him every other time.

“Seems like it did,” Tony agreed and carefully slid his hand under Sam’s shirt.

“How do you feel about that?” Sam asked and put a bit of distance between them.

“I feel very good about this,” Tony gave back. “Do you…? Do you feel good about this, too?”

“I’ve wanted to do this for weeks. So I am definitely going with yes.”

“Does that make us boyfriends or just friends with benefits?” Tony carefully asked, because there was still the slim chance that Sam would either decide that Tony really wasn’t worth his time, or that he wanted to concentrate on finding his real soulmate.

Sam fully pulled back and rubbed his side. “Actually, I think that makes us soulmates,” he said while he pulled his shirt up to reveal a now blue streak of ink.

“Oh, wow,” Tony breathed and just stared at the word for some time.

“Are you showing me yours?” Sam asked him and Tony slightly shook his head, putting his hand protectively over his heart.

“No? What if it didn’t turn blue? What if this is some kind of fluke? I mean, I didn’t feel anything special, I mean soulmate special, so what if this is not, you know, what if mine didn’t turn blue?”

“There is no special soulmate feeling, Tony,” Sam gently said.

“But you knew…”

“Because I love you, and I wanted this to be true. That’s how I knew.”

“No tingly world-changing feeling?” Tony asked just to be true, but Sam already had his hands under his shirt. He was just waiting for permission.

“None other than the tingly world-changing feeling you get when you kiss the person you’re in love with, I promise.”

Tony took a deep breath. “Okay then,” he agreed and Sam slid his shirt up to reveal his word as soon as Tony took his hand away.

Tony was a bit too afraid to look down, but going by the way Sam’s face got all soft and a little smile played around his mouth Tony would guess it turned out okay.

“Integrity, huh?” Sam asked and then leaned down to place a kiss right over Tony’s heart where the word was.

“All night-sky blue?” Tony asked, just to be sure and Sam hummed against his skin.

“All night-sky blue,” he agreed.

“Thank god,” Tony breathed and Sam came up to kiss him again.

“Thank god indeed,” he said.

As soon as Sam said that Tony started to shake.

“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Sam asked him concerned and stroke his hands up and down Tony’s arms.

“It’s just…adrenaline fading I think. I mean, I did just nearly bleed out and I haven’t slept in two days, and this was really straining too, so yeah. Exhaustion.”

“I have the best cure for that,” Sam quietly told him and pressed a kiss to his jaw before he tugged Tony over to the couch.

“Sleep?” Tony asked, and willingly went with Sam.

“Sleep,” Sam agreed and settled down on the couch before he pulled Tony down on top of him.

“Comfortable?” Sam asked once Tony was settled on top of Sam.

Sam had one hand at the back of Tony’s head, just lazily carding his fingers through his soft hair at the back of his neck, while the other was drawing little circles onto Tony’s back.

“Mhm,” Tony hummed and snuggled a bit closer, prompting Sam to give him a kiss to the top of his head.

It was the last time they spoke for a while.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story also has a [post on Tumblr](http://bloody-bee-tea.tumblr.com/post/157112092286/this-is-for-marvelingjules-because-today-is-her)
> 
> You can always find me on my [tumblr](http://bloody-bee-tea.tumblr.com/)


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